


The Paper Plane

by Khaelis



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Artist AU, Cute, F/M, First Meetings, Fluff, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 01:42:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12760545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khaelis/pseuds/Khaelis
Summary: Little did Rose know the handsome man she'd been sketching for almost a year was completely bonkers.But was he, really?[Prompt Fic | Artist Meet-cute | Rose sketches the Doctor, he notices]





	The Paper Plane

**Author's Note:**

> Short AU one-shot I wrote, because I was inspired by the prompt on the doctorroseprompts Tumblr, "Artist meetcute where she’s sketching the Doctor and they notice"!
> 
> A different take on how the Doctor and Rose met!
> 
> I hope you'll like it, please let me know what you think! :)

* * *

 

 

She rummaged through her pink backpack for a moment, and found her small sketchpad and her favorite pencil - a cheap brand she had used for years, because she liked the feel of it in her hand and how it ran smoothly on her paper. She took a glance at her surroundings, and something akin to disappointment made a soft sigh fly from her lips. He was nowhere in sight. 

 

That old bench under the big oak had become her treasured spot a few months back. Ever since she’d seen him for the first time. At first, she’d been coming here for the strings of people rushing down the street, the lazy ones wandering around with a carton cup of coffee in their hands, the old ones walking their tiny dogs and chattering away about the latest neighbourhood gossip. She loved to capture all those irrelevant moments in her sketchpad, slices of life that made it so much more interesting to draw those faces. Spontaneous expressions, natural features, true feelings. So different from drawing all those models that stood before her in class. 

 

And then, one day, she had be enthralled by him. A tall man that had been standing at the corner of the coffee shop, long enough for her to draw his face to the shallowest crinkle at the corner of his eyes. She had been fascinated by those features and those proportions. Nothing seemed right about them, and yet the whole ensemble just worked. A left eyebrow that stood high on his forehead above an eye that was just slightly bulgier than the other. A not-quite crooked nose that tended to deviate on the right. A pouty lower lip that somehow compensated for the inexistent upper one. Old-fashioned sideburns that managed to make his face look thinner than it already was and that ran up his temples to melt into a mane of brown silky spikes. Each element taken on its own wasn’t necessarily pretty, but when put together they created the most handsome face she’d seen a man wear.

 

And she’d had more than enough time to study that face - because she had seen him more than once in the corner of that coffee shop. She never knew why he stood there like a flower pot, but she never complained. Sometimes, she’d even feel like he was there just for her, striking poses, a hand on his hip, the other tugging at his hair, crossing his ankles or leaning back against the brick wall. Of course, he wasn’t, really. She just fancied the idea.

 

She opened her sketchbook on a blank page and looked around again to find the subject of her next drawing, but nothing caught her eye. If he wasn’t so much on her mind, she might have deemed worthy to sketch that small boy, a baseball cap screwed on the top of his blond curls, merrily licking at a colorful icecream. She brought the tip of her pencil to the paper, and with a resolved puff, she started drawing. Each brush of her pencil against the smooth white surface gave more life to his face, and she was almost scared to know all of his features so well. And rather ashamed to use that knowledge for… What she’d had trouble defining as anything other than lustful fantasies. 

 

Within minutes, a three-quarter view of his face was staring back at her - well, given the eyes squinted shut and the pouty mouth hanging half-open in a silent cry of pleasure she had given him, it was more the other way around.

  
  


“Is my left ear  _ that  _ wonky?”

  
  


She shrieked when that melodious rang sing-sang close to her ear and she fumbled to close her sketchbook holding a terrifying amount of very personal fantasies. But a slender hand was faster than her, keeping it open on the one page she had been working on. She was tempted to run away and leave all of her stuff behind, but it was too late. He was already jumping over the back of the bench and sliding to sit uncomfortably close to her - which made it impossible to stop a raging blush setting her cheeks on fire. A quick look on the left and she was sure that it was him. The pinstriped suit, the long brown coat, the deep red tie.  _ Crap _ .

  
  


“I’m so sorry,” she managed to apologize after clearing her throat several times.

“Not at all, in fact, I think you’re right,” he smiled, tugging on his ear. “It  _ is  _ wonky. And to be honest with you, I think all the rest is pretty wonky too. I mean, look at that eye!”

  
  


She stiffened when he bent to stick his face mere inches away from her, so close she could feel his hot breath on her jaw and had no choice but to look at his bright chocolate eyes gleaming with a twinkle of cheekiness. Beautiful eyes she would have gladly drowned into if the intensity of their gaze wasn’t stealing away to her last ounce of coherence. 

  
  


“Is that why you keep drawing me?” he asked - and she wished the floor would swallow her alive. “Because my face is so wonky it’s interesting to draw?”

“No,” she breathed out, finding out it was a bad move to lower her eyes when they fell on those very pretty lips.

“Oh, is it because you like my face, then?” he beamed.

  
  


Her blush got worse, if that was even possible, and his smile got brighter, if that was even possible.

  
  


“You  _ do  _ like my face!” he giggled, a very communicative giggle that had her laugh despite her shame. “Well, I must say, coming from such a beautiful woman, that is a compliment. By the way, what’s your name, dear lady?”

“Rose, Rose Tyler,” she shrugged, nervously tapping the lead of her pencil against her sketchpad. “Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, I just…”

“Nonsense,” he interrupted, finally allowing her to breathe properly as he stood from the bench. “You have quite the talent, miss Tyler, I am thrilled to be one of your subjects. It means… Quite a lot to me, than you fancy this face.”

“What do you mean,  _ this face _ ?” Rose raised an eyebrow.

“Well, this face is not my first, and won’t be my last,” he answered with a grin. “That one is actually quite recent, and I’m still not quite used to it. Hence, I like that you like it.”

“Of course,” she nodded, thinking she might have stumbled upon a mad man.

“Yep, two months old,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “The ear might be wonky, but it’s better than it was. My previous ears were too big. So was my nose. Miss the blue eyes, though.”

“I’m sure you do,” she smiled uneasily, stuffing her sketchpad in her backpack, thinking it might be best to run away as fast as she could.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” 

“No, I don’t. Look, I should…”

“I’m an alien, miss Tyler. And I can assure you, my face can change. And I got that wonky face two months ago.”

“Yes, that’s probably why I first sketched your face almost a year ago,” she sighed, disappointed that this handsome man was also completely bonkers.

“Oh, that’s because I can travel in time!” he grinned, following in her footsteps when she started to walk away. “I’m the Doctor. Time Lord, from the planet Gallifrey.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Doctor from Gallifrey, but I have a class that starts in twenty minutes and I need to go.”

“Right, of course,” he nodded, stopping in his tracks as she started to climb down the stairs into the tube station. “I’ll see you soon, Rose Tyler!”

 

***

Rose was bored out of her mind. She loved drawing, she loved art, but she most definitely hated those art history lessons. The page of her notepad was still desperately blank despite the lesson having started more than half an hour back, apart from a few doodles she’s scribbled on the corners. At least, she’d been smart enough to sit in the last row of the auditorium, which allowed her to doze off, her face cradled in the palm of her hand.

 

She jumped when something hit her arm and looked down on her smell desk to see the projectile. A paper plane. She spotted a few lines of graphite on the wings, and, thinking she could use the distraction, she began to unfold it. Her breath remained trapped halfway in when she saw what the drawing was.  _ Him _ , again. But she was most certain she had never drawn him with that face, in this position - a face that seemed to be asleep, buried in a pillow, the pouty mouth she liked open in what she could imagine to be a soft snore. She noticed that this drawing was even more detailed that hers, with a little something she couldn’t quite see that made it look more realistic. More accurate. More  _ intimate _ . The kind of details that clearly meant that whoever had drawn this must have spent quite a long time on his side.

 

Then she saw the few words written under the drawing, and an odd feeling coursed through her. This was her handwriting. Sharp, little letters that read,  _ Trust him, he’s the Doctor, _ along with a smiley face that had become one of her signatures over the years. And under that, a date. More than five years into the future. It didn’t make any sense. She wanted to laugh at herself for even considering that what this man had told her might be true. A time traveller. An alien. Right. She flipped the bent page over and was surprised to find a few other lines - still her handwriting, but the hurried kind, the undefined letters melting into each other, translating into three short sentences.

 

_ Trust me and take his hand.  _

_ Go with him.  _

_ He needs you.  _

_ Rose _

 

Rose rotated on her seat and glanced at the door in the back of the auditorium. Sure enough, the first thing she saw was his face, comically taking a peek at her with a sheepish smile. And then she saw his hand and his wiggling fingers, an invitation for her to join him. She stared at the unfolded paper plane for a few seconds, then at the boring teacher who was still talking about boring facts with his boring voice, then back to the paper plane again. 

 

She grabbed her backpack, shoved her notepad inside, folded the paper plane and tucked it inside her pocket. 

 

A minute later, her fingers wrapped around his, a smile was exchanged, and they both stepped into the weird alien blue box that was bigger on the inside.

 

Two days later, she decided that she never wanted to leave the Doctor and his wonderful ship.

 

Three weeks later, she already promised him that she would never leave him.

 

Four years later, after they’d both acknowledged their feelings and made love for the first time, she drew his sleeping, peaceful face on the page that would eventually be folded into a paper plane.

 

* * *

 


End file.
